Bug#566006: netcfg/dhcp_timeout values over 60 are not honoured
Package: debian-installer
Version: lenny
I've been trying to get a reliable fully automatic netboot install.
The default value of netcfg/dhcp_timeout is rather too short for this
kind of application so I decided to increase it to 150.
Experimentation shows that values of greater than around 60 are
ineffective. They affect the progress indication (which is based on %
of the specified timeout) but after about 60s it fails anyway (perhaps
with the progress indicator nowhere near 100%).
I've done tests with values of (unset), 5, 60, 150, and 500, timing
the results against a wall clock, and the effect seems to be
consistent with an upper effective value of a little more than 60s.
I conjecture that there are two parallel timeout mechanisms, one of
which is controlled by netcfg/dhcp_timeout, but the other of which is
fixed at 60 (or perhaps 65s - my timings are by eye so I'm not certain
of the exact value).
I don't have a record of the versions I downloaded but here are the
MD5 checksums:
b3d72aad69031b81d0350d609d71829c /tftpboot/pxe/debian-installer/i386/linux
4937c5134cd5c55bee2e696a29638bb1 /tftpboot/pxe/debian-installer/i386/initrd.gz
If it would help to try a new version please let me know.
Ian.
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